Wednesday, July 19, 2017

THE PATRIOT POST - ALEXANDER'S COLUMN 07/19/2017

Trump/Putin Collusion: What Did They Know and When Did They Know It?

Countering the most perilous domestic threat to American Liberty: collusion between Democrats and their mainstream media partisans.

By Mark Alexander · July 19, 2017

"But the fact being once established, that the press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood, I leave to others to restore it to its strength, by recalling it within the pale of truth." —Thomas Jefferson (1805)

In 1974, former Sen. Howard Baker (R-TN) was the ranking minority member of the Senate committee investigating the Watergate cover-up conspiracy. The Senate endeavored to determine if Republican President Richard Nixon, who won his 1972 re-election bid by the fourth-largest margin (23.15%) in history, had concealed after-the-fact knowledge of a break-in at the Democrat National Committee headquarters by Republican operatives. (Now, apparently, breaking into the DNC or the secret email server of a Democrat presidential candidate is much easier done by computer.)

At a critical juncture in that investigation, Baker (who later served as Ronald Reagan's chief of staff in 1987) posited, "What did the president know and when did he know it?" He and his then-young understudy and chief counsel, Fred Thompson, went on to aggressively pursue the truth regarding their party's president. Baker said, "I'll dig for the facts, and I'll follow wherever they lead," and indeed, they did.

Those were the glory days of The Washington Post, whose journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are credited with uncovering information about the break-in, including involvement by the Justice Department, FBI, CIA and the White House — leading to Nixon.

Facing the certainty of impeachment in the Democrat-controlled House and conviction by the Democrat-controlled Senate, Nixon at least had the integrity to resign his office on August 9, 1974, rather than drag the nation through an impeachment proceeding. As you recall, Bill Clinton possessed no such integrity when he was impeached by the House in 1998 on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice. He was ultimately acquitted of those charges by the Senate a year later in a 50-50 vote.

Earlier this week, Julie Pace, the liberal Washington bureau chief for the Associated Press, observed quizzically, "Every time [the Trump administration] finds [its] footing, every time they feel like they've had a positive message, something on the Russia investigation emerges."

Apparently, one of the AP's ranking journalists believes this correlation is complete coincidence.

Hmmm. Well, Julie, could it be that the Leftmedia is holding back its Russia cards and playing them as needed every time the Trump administration "finds its footing" or has a "positive message"?

There was a time when the collusion between the Democrat Party and mainstream media dezinformatsiya outlets could rely solely on Donald Trump to singlehandedly undermine his success by issuing stupid social media posts.

But a week before Trump's inaugural, former FBI Director James Comey added a powerful propaganda weapon to the Leftmedia's arsenal in its relentless effort to undermine Trump's agenda.

That Russia fabrication and leak was, and remains, the source for the Demos' "Trump/Putin" conspiracy theories. In fact, now there is sufficient evidence to conclude that Democrat operatives were behind the dossier, but neither The Washington Post nor The New York Times are concerned with facts, having become masters in the art of the BIG lie.

Again, as the AP's Julie Pace noted, every time Trump achieves favorable reviews, predictably another Trump/Putin story emerges, which almost always originate with the Times or the Post.

Pace was referencing the most recent case in point...

After Trump's widely applauded NATO address in Poland and his G-20 summit 10 days ago, that success was derailed in short order by the latest revelation regarding the Russian collusion delusion — that in June 2016, Donald Trump Jr. spent a few minutes with a Russian lawyer, in a meeting set up by a third party who claimed she might have some useful (read: damaging) info on Hillary Clinton. In political and corporate parlance, that is called "opposition research" or "competitor intelligence," but never mind that it amounted to nothing.

What an amazing coincidence — that on the heels of Trump's successful week abroad, yet another Russian collusion story emerged.

For the record, in my considered opinion, The New York Times and The Washington Post have been, and still are, holding Trump/Putin cards, and they're timing the play of those cards to undercut any Trump agenda momentum.

Thus, this is the question every Beltway and New York media "journalist" should be asking: "Beyond whatthe Post and Times knew about the Trump Jr. meeting, when did they know it?" (Memo to Bob Woodward...)

Did the Times or Post have this information for weeks or months prior to making headlines with it, and if so, why did they not release it sooner?

Of course, there are few genuine journalists remaining in either of those markets to ask such an important question — especially one that would challenge such Leftmedia Goliaths.

As I have noted since that fake Russian dossier first emerged, the endless loop of the Demo/MSM'sTrump/Putin collusion conspiracy coverage is utterly baseless. It's nothing more than a political diversion and obfuscation tactic to destabilize Trump's agenda — and, by extension, that of the Republican Congress. And it's working!

Contemplate this — if Vladimir Putin's goal is to weaken the American people's confidence in their political system, then the Democrat/MSM collusion is certainly accomplishing his objective.

Undermining Trump's presidency sows discord among Republicans in the House and Senate ahead of the 2018 midterm election and ensures the failure of critical initiatives such as the effort to repeal and replacethe so-called "Affordable Care Act" this week.

Every card-carrying member of the Demo/MSM consortium knows the Trump/Putin collusion fabrication is a political charade — unless their brains have been totally consumed with Potomac fever.

Notably, however, many younger Leftmedia activists aren't biting, and in fact are becoming more outspoken in their objection to the Russia ruse.

Left-wing protagonist Max Blumenthal, senior editor of AlterNet, offered this assessment this week: "As someone on the left who has protested against Trump, I didn't expect this hysteria to completely take over. ... The Democrats are pushing Russia scandalmongering nonstop. It's subsumed all of the progressive grassroots movements and it's basically burning the left. ... People who are progressive, who are falling into it, I need to know what the long-term consequences of this cynical narrative are. ... There is definitely a political class in Washington that sees Russia scandalmongering as the silver bullet to take out Trump. ... The Democrat establishment ... can't agree on a big economic message ... so this [collusion conspiracy] is convenient because it gives them a way of opposing Trump without having to do anything remotely progressive."

Blumenthal calls the Demo/MSM "the boot-licking press." He adds, "There's never any clear sourcing, never any sources on the record."

When asked by political commentator Tucker Carlson "what kind of response have you received" from the Leftmedia and liberals since registering your objections to the Russia charade, Blumenthal responded, "I'll probably get called a Putin puppet."

And while the fictional Trump/Putin collusion conspiracy is this summer's blockbuster hit inside the Beltway, Americans across the country are increasingly tuning out the Leftmedia. And notably, those who supported Trump in 2016 are now overwhelmingly unimpressed with the collusion conspiracy claptrap. Turns out that outside the Beltway swamp political and media echo chambers, Americans are more concerned about the economy — which, Demo-gogues Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer might recall, is why Trump won!

That notwithstanding, some of the more hysterical Democrats are now calling for Trump's impeachment, including Hillary Clinton's kooky 2016 running mate, Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine: "We're now beyond obstruction of justice in terms of what's being investigated. This is moving into perjury, false statements and even potentially treason."

Political analyst Michael Barone notes that this ludicrous overreach by "Democratic politicians who haven't given up on dreams of somehow ousting Trump from office and who are eager as always to delegitimize his presidency" might backfire.

But the Demo/MSM demolition derby shows no signs of letting up — and it won't, because it's underwritten in large measure by socialist Hungarian billionaire George Soros and others, like socialist American billionaire Tom Steyer.

So I ask again: "Beyond what the Post and Times knew about the Trump Jr. meeting, when did they know it?"